Close Up (Jul-Nov 1927)

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CLOSE UP total result of these efforts towards improvement was a destruction of the relationship between onlookers and film. With the old unity gone the audience grew disorderly. Talking increased. Prosperity waned. iNluch advertisment of ''west-end successes*' pulled things together for a while during which the management aimed still higher. An evening came when in place of the limping duet of violin* and piano several instruments held together by some kind of conducting produced sprightly and hannonious effects. At halftime the screen was curtained leaving the musician's pit in a semi-darkness where presently wavered a green spot-light that came to rest upon the figure of a handsome young Jew dramatically fronting the audience with violin poised for action. Fireworks. Applause. After which the performance was allowed to proceed. Within a month the attendance was reduced to a scattered few and in due course the hall was "closed for decorations'", to reopen some months later ''under entirely new management", undecorated and with the old pianist restored to his place. The audience drifted back. But during the interregnum, and whilst concerted musical efforts were doing their worst, an incident occurred that convinced me that any kind of musical noise is better than none. Our orchestra failed to appear and the pictures moved silently by, lifeless and colourless, to the sound of intennittent talking and the continuous faint hiss and creak of the apparatus. The result seemed to justify the curses of the most ardent enemies of the cinema and I understood at last what 60